Friday, May 18, 2012

ProLife book

I recently joined a new social networking site. ProlifeBook,com. I certainly don't need another time vampire social media site, but I thought it might be a nice way to get some fresh ideas and network with others who are pro life. Sadly in the area where I live, although most people believe "personally" in respecting life, many give little thought to the issue and do little to actively promote the idea.

One of the features I have been exploring, that I have not explored on other social sites, is polls. One of the polls asks the religion of members, and it seems from the responses that a significant majority (75%) of members are Catholic or orthodox, followed by 15% other Christians, 3% non-Christian religions, and 8% not religious (atheist/agnostic). Now this is a very unscientific poll, but I couldn't help but do some analysis.

According to the Pew Forum in America the breakdown of population by religion is 24% Catholic, 54% other Christians, 5% other religions, and 16% not religious. I realize that this site does not host only Americans, but a significant number of folks from other countries, but I think it's fair to say a majority of members are American, so I'm going to use these numbers for an approximation.

Using the numbers above, it would seem that Catholics are way more pro-life than these other groups (which makes sense because the Catholic Church is the only major religion that has not changed its position on abortion, contraception, and other life issues in the past 100 years or so). If you go back 100 years, you would find all Christian religions (and most others) united on issues of abortion, euthanasia, contraception, and the like.

Excluding the Catholics, who skew all the numbers, and the "other religions" because the absolute number in the poll is too small to draw conclusions, how are the Christians doing against the atheists? Not very well. The non religious account for 8% of responders vs. 16% in the general population, while the Christians account for a mere 15% of responders vs. 54% in the general population.

Now this may not mean anything other than that the poll was not voted on by non-Catholic Christians, or that the site itself has not been discovered by many non-Catholic Christians. I don't intend to nor encourage you to draw any other conclusions, but no matter what the reason, we should encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ (and everyone else) to become part of the discussion.

In fact, if you're reading this, and you're not on pro-life book? Why not?

2 comments:

Mike,

I'm an evangelical on prolifebook. I didn't see that particular poll, so naturally I haven't voted. Through my pro-life involvement, I have found that a majority of the people I participate with are, in fact, Catholic. I don't have a clue what is wrong with other Christian denominations not being actively pro-life. Maybe they have read a different Bible? More likely, they haven't read the Bible at all. Stephen R. Boltinghouse

Amen Stephen. At least in my experience, Evangelicals are one of a very small set of Christians who stand firm with Biblical teachings on life issues. Those who claim to follow the Bible but are "Pro-choice" make me think of 2 Peter 3:16

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